A Cement Tile roof to help prevent your home from catching on fire during a Firestorm like in Los Angeles County?

 When we bought our home in 1999 on the Northern California Coast we were surprised in a pleasant way that our roof was a Cement Tile Roof.

There are many reasons why you would want something like this by the way. For example, the house has to be built much stronger in how it is built in order to carry the weight of cement tiles on the roof in the first place. But, once it is built this way it helps prevent your house from catching on fire at least from the roof from flying embers in a fire in the winds like in Los Angeles County. 

The other advantage of this is that you might never have to change any of the Cement tiles (UNLESS) someone steps on them wrong and cracks or breaks them for the life of your home. You do, however, have to change (maybe once in 10 years or so?) the tar paper underneath the cement Tiles to prevent water leakage from rain into your home. However, this is true of almost any home you will ever live in or own as well.

But, you won't have to change roofing unless your kids are running all over the roof and cracking the tiles (and hopefully not falling off the roof).

Another advantage I didn't see but I heard about was that a 2 foot wide tree trunk and tree fell across our roof before we bought the house without damaging the roof rafters or any other more permanent damage to the roof simply because the roof has to be built so strong to begin with. So, this really big pine tree fell against our roof before we bought the house and it withstood this with no major damage at all outside of few broken tiles and maybe the tar paper had to be changed underneath. But, they said there were not holes into the wooden part of the roof like in the plywood that usually covers a roof under the tar paper and roofing tiles or green felt or whatever you cover your roof with.

Now, a cement tile roof doesn't guarantee in a fire like in Los Angeles County recently will not burn up your house. But, at least it cannot easily catch from the roof because the embers would land on a cement tile with nothing to burn there. However, it could through blowing wind go into a vent on your roof or to under your house and catch fire there anyway.

So, this will definitely help but in the 100 mph winds that the fires in Los Angeles County had almost any home (even with cement tiles) could burn up through vents into the attic or to under the house if you have a peer block constructed subfloor on the first floor of your house.

However, because the weather is so warm in Southern California, very few houses have basements at all and possibly the most common construction would be a cement slab foundation and a ranch style home because it is easier and less expensive to build in places as warm as southern California.